Is it wrong?

I started playing wow in early TBC, my first character was a night elf druid, I shared my account with a friend as we were both new to online gaming, and fairly young the only way we could keep paying the sub is if we pulled our money together.
I enjoyed it greatly, even if the wetlands walk took me forever due to lag, and I spent months inside of Teldrasil.

Eventually, I learned the ropes, I ran deadmines over 100 times and was only about lvl 25, but was better than average geared for my lvl. I spent most my time talking in goldshire, and going on adventures into the world to spy on the horde, or other silly things. however it was still hard to keep up with subs all the time. I was messing with a new program called teamspeak, and found a wow server, however they were playing on something called "wowscape" and informed me it was a free version of wow. I immediately downloaded it and never looked back. Never...until the server was shut down shortly after the WOTLK launch.

After the server went down, I was in a position that allowed me to better pay for wow, so I got a new account and returned to retail wow. I didint enjoy retail WOTLK, I constantly missed my adventures with my old friends on the other server. Cata came out, and it was even worse than WOTLK for me, I now play MOP, and now that iv adjusted to the way wow is suppose to be played now days, I do indeed find it fun. Im mostly a pvp player, however the lore and world is the biggest appeal to me, so MOP was wonderful.

However, recently iv decided that I enjoy lvling up in wow more than endgame, as that is when pvp(used to) lore and world shine. However, lvling is too fast in wow now days, with dungeons and pvp lvling the world is empty, my "silly" side adventures are thus rare if not gone. As such, im debating downloading a TBC server to enjoy the old fashion lvling side of world of warcraft, while keeping my sub active to do serious pvp and keeping up with the current story and expansions. (Besides iv almost forgot what the old world looked like in some areas).

My question is this: Would you consider playing on a private server wrong even if I keep an active sub? I play, get my conquest points, push rating, and simply find myself without much to do.

Blizz still gets their money, and they don't have to support the server load for old fashion wow, so I don't personally see anything wrong with it.

There is no qualifying context to playing on a private server that makes it ok. It's illegal. Nothing more needs to be said.

Blindingly defending Blizzard; ignorantly trashing Blizzard. Both require an emotional investment that I'm unwilling to give. I'll take reason, logic, facts, and the willingness to accept that I may be wrong. At the end of the day I'll have nothing to account for and I may even have learned something.

There is no qualifying context to playing on a private server that makes it ok. It's illegal. Nothing more needs to be said.

Illegal to host or illegal to play on? Or both? Or simply against TOS? As far as im aware its not punishable by law, but blizz wouldn't want it advertised in any way in their game.

Besides morally, I feel in the right since blizzard has said they refuse to host old servers. (I have to look elsewhere for such service if they wont provide it) The moment they offer it, id double my sub payment for the chance.